BRAGG: This is the story of how British interests abroad
spread the English Ianguage
and how it was changed and recharged
by its foreign adventures --
in India...
MAN: [ Native accent ] There is a rally coming up,
so I'II have to take a detour and come, sir.
You know, in India, everything goes a Iittle slow.
BRAGG: ...in the Caribbean...
MAN: [ Patwa accent ] Yeah, man. I used to pull him with my boat.
So one day I pull him right at this spot, and I said to him,
"You know you can make some money here."
[ Laughter ]
BRAGG: ...and in Australia.
MAN: G'day. How you goin'?.
No, I'm down by Circular Quay having some brekkie.
BRAGG: The forces of empire spread English around the globe.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this drive,
it could truly be claimed
that the sun never set on the English Ianguage.
As it spread, it gave birth to new Englishes,
and they became Iocked in battles
for power and prestige with the mother tongue.
New Englishes became a source of pride for some,
of shame for others,
and of conflict, of Iiberation, even of brotherhood.
And one outcome is indisputable --
The English Ianguage was enriched immeasurably.
Subtitling made possible by Acorn Media
In India, English faced a country
of intense and elaborate civilisations,
a magnificent empire initially much greater than its own.
And it faced an enormous challenge
if it was to establish itself in a country
which today boasts over a thousand-million people
and 200 different Ianguages,
including Hindi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi,
Punjabi, Kashmiri, and Urdu.
But establish itself it did.
And here in Calcutta,
the signs are still, Iiterally, all around me.
[ Hip-hop music plays, man sings in native Ianguage ]
We gave English words to India,
and some words from our experience in India
have fed back into English, most of them from Hindi --
familiar words Iike blighty, bungalow, cheroot,
Ioot, ghoul, thug, pundit, coolie, cashmere,
dungarees, bandana, jodhpurs, pyjamas, cot, divan, shampoo,
cash, toddy, decko, gymkhana, polo, bangle, jungle, cushy,
khaki, doolally, dinghy, catamaran, caste, swastika,
juggernaut, avatar, guru, karma, mantra, yoga, and sacred cow.
AII these and many more were adopted from the subcontinent.
Trade contacts through the early Middle Ages
brought the first words from Asia into the English Ianguage,
often through Latin or Greek,
which absorbed them and passed them on.
Words Iike pepper, beryl, ginger, panther, sugar, musk,
sandal, camphor, and opal all seem to have their roots
in Ianguages spoken on the subcontinent
and especially in Sanskrit.
But the close relationship between English and India
really began at the start of the 17th century,
when the East India Company was granted a monopoly charter
to seek out and trade
with the rich spice markets of the East.
This was a collision of cultures
between the British merchant adventurers
and the potentates of Oriental society.
And in order to prosper,
the English had to Iearn the Iexicon of power and degree
and to curry favour.
Obsequiousness mattered.
The English at that time
were amateurs in class and social distinctions
compared with a culture which included maharaja,
mandarin, nabob, shah, mogul, khan, rajah, padishah,
Iama, seyyid, sultana, and maharani.
The English had to kowtow
and Iearn Bengali and Hindi to survive.
And they did.
In India, after years of negotiation,
begging and buttering up the Mughal rulers
in their own Persian tongue,
they were allowed to set up trading posts -- factories --
at Madras, Bombay, and amid the opulence of Surat.
At the end of the 17th century,
the English established another factory here,
in a tiny village on the banks of the River Hooghly,
which would become one of the world's
greatest trading cities -- Calcutta.
What brought the English to India was a commodity
that they could turn a profit on around the markets of the East,
a commodity that India was famous for then and now --
cloth.
In India, the English found
a variety of brightly coloured printed and woven fabrics.
Delicate muslins, chintzes, calicos, and ginghams.
When these reached Britain, they became an instant success
and their names as familiar as they are today.
India and Britain.
It was the start of a relationship
that would be enduring, passionate,
and often marred by misunderstanding and violence.
English had planted its foot firmly on Indian soil,
but it had hardly announced its presence with a fanfare.
The East India Company prospered.
But in this vast country, its English-speaking employees
were numbered in hundreds, not thousands.
Some of the senior employees were encouraged to go native,
take Iocal wives, and adopt Iocal habits and dress.
And when they wanted to conduct business,
they had to Iearn the Iocal Ianguages.
For most Britishers, this was a matter of commercial necessity.
But there were others
who had a more scholarly interest in India's Ianguages.
One of these British students of the Orient made a discovery
which rewrote the history of the English Ianguage.
English had traced its roots
back to the dialects of the Germanic invaders from Frisia
in the 5th century --
as we did at the start of this series -- but no further.
But in 1 784, William Jones,
who was in India in his capacity as Supreme Court judge,
founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal
to encourage inquiry into
the "history, civil and natural, the antiquities,
arts, sciences, and Iiterature of Asia."
And when Jones started to Iook
at the ancient Ianguage of Sanskrit --
a Ianguage written down two or three centuries
before the "IIiad" and the "Odyssey,"
he discovered what was effectively the prequel
of the adventure of English.
He discovered that one of the deepest roots of English
was here in India.
Jones made the startling discovery
that there were similarities between words in Sanskrit
and the younger Ianguages
of Greek, Latin, English, and others.
Where Sanskrit had "pitar,"
Latin had "pater," OId Norse "fathir,"
Gothic "fadar," and English "father."
The Sanskrit "bhratar,"
Latin "frater," German "bruder,"
SIavic "bratu," Irish "brathair,"
and, of course, English "brother."
Even the forms of verb Iooked similar --
English "am," OId English "eom,"
Gothic "im," Latin "sum,"
Greek "eimi," Sanskrit "asmi."
English "is," Gothic "ist,"
Latin "est," Greek "esti," and Sanskrit "asti."
Jones decided that this was evidence
that they were all descended from one Indo-European Ianguage,
and his work was the foundation of modern philology --
the study of Ianguages.
English had acquired a new past --
here at the headquarters of the Asiatick Society.
It was just one of the new buildings
with which the British were reshaping Calcutta.
By 1 765, the balance of power had shifted.
The Mughal empires had collapsed,
and the East India Company took over the administration
and financial control of Bengal, India's richest province.
Calcutta was becoming a colonial capital,
a centre of commercial, political, and social Iife.
Here the relationship between Indian and British
became one of servant and master.
A dangerous climate of feeling was developing --
that it was the duty and destiny of the British
to govern in India.
They were no Ionger going native,
marrying Indian women, adopting Indian customs,
and Iearning Iocal Ianguages.
They began to see themselves
as superior to the native population.
And the essence of their superiority was their religion.
In 1 81 3, the foreign secretary, William Wilberforce,
told the British Parliament
that they were morally obliged to change
what he called India's "dark and bloody superstition
for the genial influence of Christian Iight and truth."
The British had Iooked at India
and had decided that the Indians just weren't British enough.
In the interest of their happiness
and for the good of their souls,
they needed to be converted to Christianity and Western morals.
A string of missionaries headed east
to devote themselves to this work.
In order to teach their religion, they set up schools,
and they taught not in the Ianguages of India,
but in English.
There were Indians who welcomed the establishment
of English-Ianguage education,
recognising that it could give India access
to modern Western thought and scientific knowledge.
But what happened next went beyond education.
A new English-Ianguage policy changed Indian society
and its relationship with the British forever.
In 1 835, Thomas Babington Macaulay,
writer and member of the Supreme Council in Calcutta,
wrote his famous -- or infamous -- "Minute."
In it, he Iaid out why he thought the teaching of English,
rather than any Indian Ianguage,
should become official government policy.
He summed up...
MAN: "The dialects commonly spoken
among the natives of this part of India
contain neither Iiterary nor scientific information
and are, moreover, so poor and rude
that it will not be easy to translate
any valuable work into them.
The claims of our own Ianguage
it is hardly necessary to recapitulate.
It stands preeminent, even among the Ianguages of the West.
I think it clear that it is possible
to make natives of this country perfectly good English scholars,
and to this end our effort ought to be directed."
Today, that sounds astonishingly patronising.
It sounded so to many at the time.
English would be the imperial Ianguage of India.
There were some who welcomed it
and saw it as a window to a bigger world --
and they still do --
others who resented it as an intolerable imposition --
and they still do.
This English education
would only ever be for a minority of Indians.
Macaulay's intention in creating these "good English scholars"
was to create a new class of Indians
whose knowledge of the English Ianguage and ideas
would make them Ioyal to their colonial rulers,
a class who he said would be interpreters
between the few thousand British in India
and the millions whom they governed.
These were the clerks of the Indian Civil Service,
who were known here as "writers."
This huge building behind me -- the Writers Building --
was constructed to house them.
From here, hundreds of thousands of instructions
dealing with Iaw, finance, health, commerce,
and the nuts and bolts of government
were issued in English.
From here, the British, through English, ran India.
As the 19th century progressed,
the vast continent was opened up.
British colonisers, engineers, surveyors, doctors, planters
invested their Iives in the adventure.
British civil servants,
working with their English-speaking Indian writers,
administered it.
Without the English-speaking bureaucracy,
there'd have been no Raj --
a word meaning "rule" or "kingdom,"
taken from the Hindi.
English was institutionalised now in India.
It was part of the fabric of government.
It was the Ianguage of preference,
the Ianguage of prestige.
And English, as often, was changed by this encounter.
"I stand under the shoes of my client
and only seek to place my bone of contention clearly..."
BRAGG: Over time, the English spoken by Indians
became a particular, ornate form.
"Babu English" it was called.
MAN: "Your Honour will be pleased enough to observe
that my client is a widow,
a poor chap with one postmortem son."
BRAGG: The Ianguage was often taught by Indian to Indian,
with no British ear to check its proliferation of florid phrases.
MAN: "Their relationship is only homoeopathic.
So the misty arguments of my Iearned friend
will not hold water."
BRAGG: The English spoken by the British also changed.
The district officers, magistrates,
and other officials who toured the country, tending the Raj,
picked up Indian words by the bushel
and incorporated them into their daily speech.
[ Up-tempo classical music plays ]
The British Army particularly relished
picking up Indian words.
They prided themselves on being able to "bolo the bat a tora,"
meaning "to speak the Iingo a Iittle."
Or perhaps they were "banged up to the eyeballs" --
stoned on bhang --
in which case they might need a word
with the "amen-wallah" -- the chaplain --
and find themselves facing "tori peachy,"
which meant "delayed repatriation"
and was taken from the Hindi words for "a Iittle Iater."
The slang was so prolific that it needed a dictionary.
In 1 886, this great
"GIossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases"
was published, almost 900 pages of it.
Here's "khakee,"
taken from the Hindi for "dust-coloured,"
meaning "a Iight drab cloth."
The dictionary notes that,
"It is said that it is about to be introduced
into the army generally."
The dictionary has the curious title "Hobson-Jobson."
As the book explains, this is another army term,
a corruption of a phrase shouted by Muslims in a procession.
There are plenty more examples
of the way that the British adopted
and altered Indian words.
"Chapati" entered the English Ianguage as "chowpatty,"
perhaps with an echo of "patty"
or even a "cowpat" pushing it that way.
The Indian plant "kawanch,"
which has irritating hairs, became "cow-itch."
And the fish "kakap" became "cockup."
"AIIahabad" became known as "Isle of Bats."
"Basi khana" -- stale food or yesterday's dinner warmed up --
became "brass knocker."
"Brinjal" -- aubergine -- became "brown jolly."
And the great killer, "cholera morbus" in Latin,
became the very English "Corporal Forbes."
Whenever they could,
the British fled the threat of Corporal Forbes
and the heat and dust of the plains in summer
and took to the hills.
In and around hill stations Iike Darjeeling,
army officers, civil servants, and tea planters
built a Iittle England
where they could take tiffin on the veranda
with their memsahibs,
or sip a chotapeg as the sun went down.
The British had become comfortable with India
and English comfortable with its Indian borrowings.
MAN: # First a sun, fierce and glaring #
# That scorches and bakes #
# Palankeens, perspiration, and worry #
# Mosquitoes, thugs, coconuts, Brahmins, and snakes #
# With elephants, tigers, and curry #
BRAGG: But while the British enjoyed their dominion,
the seeds of Indian nationalism were being sown in meetings
in this room and rooms Iike it,
where pioneers of Indian independence used to gather.
Nehru himself -- the young Nehru --
used to come to this room.
This was the unlooked-for fruit of Macaulay's "Minute"
and the education policy
that had brought the English Ianguage to the Indian people.
As well as words, they had taken on ideas --
Western ideas of democracy, self-government, and freedom --
and English had not only given them the theory,
it had given them the Ianguage to communicate it to the world.
Rudyard Kipling noted that many Indians claimed
that they could run their own country
and that some Englishmen believed them,
but only because the Indians put their case in what he called
"beautiful English which made it sound credible."
Kipling dismissed Indian independence
as no more than a pretty idea.
But it was more. It was persistent.
The English Ianguage had inadvertently
sowed the seeds of the destruction of the Raj.
The British didn't see it coming.
When the viceroy, Lord Curzon,
choreographed a spectacular durbar
to celebrate the accession of Edward VII in 1 903,
India was still the "jewel in the crown"
of the British Empire.
And what -- or who -- could possibly dislodge it?.
Five years Iater,
one of the Ieaders of the independence movement,
a Iawyer called Mohandas K. Gandhi,
wrote a pamphlet in which he complained
about the imperial status of the English Ianguage in India.
MAN: "To give millions a knowledge of English
is to enslave them.
The foundation that Macaulay Iaid of education
has enslaved us.
I do not suggest that he had any such intention,
but that has been the result.
Is it not a sad commentary
that we should have to speak of home rule in a foreign tongue?. "
What's fascinating is the idea
that Ianguage can enslave a people.
The British didn't much have slavery
on their minds at that time.
What concerned them was building a new symbolic capital,
more than 1,000 miles away from here,
to be designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens --
a new Delhi.
Had they still taken an interest in Indian Ianguages and customs,
they might have come across the proverb which said
that anybody who tried to build
a new capital at Delhi was doomed.
It had happened six times already.
It happened to the Raj.
The Raj would be Iost,
and with that Ioss would come a move
to oust English from India altogether.
MAN: "We came to the island of the cannibals,
called Dominica, where we arrived the ninth of March.
Near about this place inhabited certain Indians,
who came down to us,
presenting mill and cakes of bread,
which they had made from a kind of corn called maize.
And they brought us down hens, pines, and potatoes.
These potatoes be the most delicate roots
that may be eaten."
BRAGG: The natives, whom Hawkins called Indians,
had been given that name by Christopher Columbus in 1 492.
He thought he had found a western route to India,
but he had in fact made Iandfall here,
12,000 miles to the east, in the Caribbean,
another stage on which the adventure of English
would be played out.
The name "Caribbean" itself,
which denotes the great sea and the arc of islands
which string out for more than 1,500 miles,
came from the real name of one of the native tribes here --
the Caribs, who were notorious for their fierceness
and cruel treatment of captives.
Another version of their name was Canib,
from which we get our word "cannibal."
And the Carib Ianguages gave English
cayman, canoe, curare, peccary, and tamarind, among other words.
From the Ianguage of another Iocal tribe, the Arawaks,
came hurricane, cassava, guava, hammock, iguana, and savanna,
two words used by Hawkins -- "maize" and "potato" --
and "mangrove," "barbecue" -- probably --
and "Jamaica" itself.
As we have seen in India and elsewhere,
when English encountered new Ianguages,
it soaked up new words.
But the adventure here in the Caribbean
is very different from the one in India.
There English, initially at Ieast,
had had to accommodate itself to established Ianguages
spoken by people with status and power.
In the Caribbean,
Iocal people and Iocal Ianguages would be pushed aside.
Others would be imported.
And they would react with English
and other European Ianguages to produce rich and unique hybrids.
English interest in the region had begun
with attempts to hijack Spanish treasure ships
by Drake, Hawkins, and others
with the unofficial approval of Queen EIizabeth.
We were pirates,
and pirate tales were as popular then as now.
By the time Daniel Defoe wrote
his "History of Pyrates" in 1 724,
words from their exotic and bloodthirsty world
had already entered the Ianguage --
doubloon, pieces of eight, sea-dog, cutlass, freebooter,
privateer, and buccaneer.
In time, the buccaneers went freelance,
preying on ships of all nations,
hiding out in fortified bases they set up
throughout the Caribbean.
The buccaneers were eventually
flushed out of their strongholds,
Iike this one at Port Royal in Jamaica.
The future belonged to other opportunists --
the colonists, who had already begun
the systematic exploitation of the Caribbean.
Where the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean meet
Iie the tiny islands of Nevis and St. Kitts.
British settlement of the Caribbean began here,
at Sandy Bay, in 1 624.
The first thing the settlers did
was to drive the Iocal Carib people off the island.
The mainly English settlers at first grew tobacco,
then switched to the more Iucrative crop of sugarcane.
They needed Iabour to work in the fields and mills.
Soon they were importing slaves from Africa --
slaves who picked up English words
from sailors on the ships that brought them over
and from the British on the plantations.
The English that was spoken on St. Kitts took different forms.
There were many British servants and Iabourers,
and they spoke in their own regional dialects.
But those further up the social Iadder --
the Iandowners and their managers --
aspired to something more refined.
One 1 8th-century plantation manager
called James Grainger
put these aspirations into writing
in an epic poem in praise of the sugarcane.
In Britain, some critics hailed Grainger
as the first real writer to come out of the Americas.
High society admired his ornate style as English at its best.
Whatever its qualities,
it was a world away from the Ianguage
spoken by the majority on St. Kitts --
that "sable progeny" of "Afric," as Grainger coyly puts it --
the black slaves who now outnumbered the white settlers.
A taste of their Ianguage
was recorded by an English carpenter, Samuel Mathews,
in the Iast decade of the 1 8th century.
On St. Kitts, he wrote down the following exchange --
a darker version of plantation Iife than Grainger's,
and perhaps the nearest we might get
to the authentic voice of a slave.
MAN: "What's the matter, Brother Quow?.
I think the overseer hit you.
You don't stand to know how
that white man is going to wrong you, Brother Quow."
This is Ianguage that shows the speaker's African origins.
Most of the words in this short passage
are recognisably English on the page,
but the sounds have shifted.
"Brother" has become "buddy," a word that's now very familiar,
but this is the first time it was recorded.
"Overseer" has become "obeshay."
This is what happens when people try to voice strange words
using the sounds that they know.
We've seen it before, in America,
when the Pilgrim fathers struggled
with Native American words.
There's another example here --
the English word "stand" has become "tan."
That's probably because a Iot of African Ianguages
don't allow two consonants to run together.
So the "st" of "stand" has become "t,"
and the "nd" has become "n."
"Stand" -- "tan."
English vocabulary -- African grammar.
There is one word straight from Africa, "bocra,"
for "European" or "white man,"
and another has come through Portuguese slave traders.
Their word "saber"
has here become "sauby" -- "to know."
MAN: "You tan no sauby how
Daw bocra mon go wrong you, Buddy Quow."
BRAGG: This kind of Ianguage is called a creole.
It's the result of African and European Ianguages colliding,
producing hybrids spoken by the black population.
MAN: "Lem me Ione, No so trouble begin now,
Aw goo mine tik von tone, So knock you rotten shin now..."
BRAGG: This was the pattern throughout the plantations
of the Caribbean.
But on each island,
the social and racial mix was slightly different,
and each island developed its own unique creole.
Unfortunately, English wasn't a benign parent
to what it regarded as its rather uncouth offspring.
The creoles continued to be treated by English speakers
as unfit for polite society.
This pressure meant that some creole speakers
tried to gentrify their Ianguage
to sound more Iike the standard English-speaking social elite.
So throughout the Caribbean
there wasn't just a division into two Ianguages --
with standard English at one end of society
and deep creole at the other --
there was a whole set of variations across society.
But however many variations there were,
standard English was treated as superior,
at Ieast by white speakers.
The original inhabitants of the island
had been cleared by brute force or disease.
English had moved in with the settlers,
and now it had dominion over the other forms of Ianguage
that it had spawned -- at Ieast for the time being.
Wherever English travelled around the globe,
the story was the same.
New colonies developed dialects of their own,
even when no other foreign Ianguages were involved.
In January 1788, a fleet of 1 1 ships
commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip
sailed gingerly between these headlands
after eight months at sea
to make Iandfall in the country which would become Australia.
The place they chose to settle would become Sydney Harbour.
Today the ferries which transport Sydney's commuters
bear the names of the ships
in what was known as the First FIeet --
sirius, supply, Fishburn Friendship, Borrowdale.
Their original cargo was also human --
over 700 seasick, half-starved souls,
feared, despised, and rejected by their British homeland,
the ancestors of some of these commuters --
the first convicts.
MAN: # Let us drink a good health #
# To our schemers above #
# Who at Iength have contrived from this Iand to remove... #
BRAGG: Over the next 80 years, over 1 50,000 convicts
were transported to Australia.
MAN: # The hulks and the jails had some thousands in store #
# But out of the jails are 1 0,000 times more #
# Who Iive by fraud, cheating, vile tricks, and foul play #
BRAGG: The British saw this as unsettled Iand,
but of course it was peopled -- by native Australians.
The Aboriginal tribes had over 250 Ianguages.
Many would disappear over time.
But in the early days,
the settlers were fascinated by the natives,
and from them they Iearned the names
for many of the new plants and animals they were encountering,
Iike the kangaroo.
English picked up more words
from the native Ianguages around Sydney Harbour --
boomerang, dingo, koala, wallaby, wallaroo, and wombat.
And "cooee," which was a call used by natives
to summon one another from a distance,
was soon adopted by the English.
And there's also a type of owl called the "boobook,"
a tree called the "waratah,"
which has become the emblem of New South Wales,
"warrigal," which is another name for the dingo,
and "woomera," a throwing stick.
As settlement spread,
English picked up words from other native Ianguages --
"billabong," a cut-off pool in the branch of a river;
"budgerigar";
"yabby," which is a crustacean;
"barramundi," a giant perch;
and from Western Australia,
"kylie," another word for "boomerang."
When Australian English developed its own character,
which it quickly did,
it came Iess from the relatively few borrowings
from the native Ianguages.
Overwhelmingly it was shaped
by the regional and criminal background
of the early settlers.
Some words that we think are most typically Australian
were actually imported --
dialect words that have died out in England
but hung on in their new home.
"Cobber" comes from the verb "cob,"
meaning "to take a Iiking to."
"Dinkum" was a word for "work,"
and "fair dinkum" meant something similar
to "fair play."
And "digger" was another word
that sailed halfway 'round the world.
English then, Australian now.
The new Australians got their most colourful vocabulary
from the criminal slang of 1 8th-century London,
which was known as "flash" or "kiddy talk" --
"kiddy" from the verb "to kid," as in "to cheat or to fool."
Some of the words they used are familiar to us now.
"Chum," meaning a fellow prisoner.
"Swag" was a "bundle of Ioot."
"Job" for "robbery," "judy" for "woman,"
"mug" for "face," "pigs" for "police,"
"beak" for "magistrate," "Iark" for "prank,"
"split" for "betray by informing,"
"put up job,"
and "stow it," meaning "keeping quiet,"
are all found in Australia
and in the criminal Ianguage of Dickens's "OIiver Twist."
It didn't take Iong for tension to develop
between the prisoners and their descendants
and the other British immigrants
who had come to make a new Iife in Australia
and were forming the colonial establishment --
people Iike the Macarthurs,
who settled here at EIizabeth Farm near Sydney
and invented the Australian sheep industry.
These British incomers were known as "sterling,"
and they spoke the Ianguage of the home country.
The people born in Australia were known as "currency"
and spoke the Iocal dialect.
At EIizabeth Farm,
male convicts were assigned to Iabour
in the surrounding fields,
females to work as servants in the house and kitchens.
Social divisions continued, defined by Ianguage.
But over time, convicts who had served their sentences
could become citizens of the emerging country
and call themselves "government men," "Iegitimates,"
"exiles," or "empire builders."
By the 1 880s, immigrants were outnumbered
by native-born Australians,
and Australian English was in rude good health.
The weekly Bulletin started appearing in Sydney.
Known as "the bushman's bible,"
it was sensational, outspoken, and slangy.
In its pages you find words Iike fair dinkum,
Iarrikin, bonzer, bloody,
offsider, fair cow, battler, and bludger --
classic Australian.
And there are examples of vivid Australian phrase-making.
And there are also poems and songs,
which helped create the image of the Australian bushman
and his speech in the outback.
MAN: # Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong #
# Under the shade of the coolibah tree #
# And he sang as he watched and waited #
# Till his billy boiled #
# You'II come a-waltzing matilda with me #
BRAGG: "Waltzing Matilda" --
"matilda" is slang for a "bedroll,"
"waltzing matilda" means "going on the road" --
was written on a sheep station
by the poet and solicitor Banjo Paterson in 1 895.
MAN: # As he watched and waited till his billy boiled #
# You'II come a-waltzing... #
BRAGG: With its mix of words from English convict slang,
Iike "swagman," meaning a "drifter,"
and from Aboriginal Ianguages, Iike "billabong" for "pond,"
and "coolibah" for "eucalyptus,"
"Waltzing Matilda" encapsulates the essence
of Australian English at the time.
And in the figure of the swagman,
who'd rather die than be taken prisoner,
it captures an attitude, a contempt for authority,
which would become a national trait.
MAN: # "You'II never take me alive!" said he #
# And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong #
# You'II come a-waltzing matilda with me #
# Waltzing matilda #
BRAGG: But while the Australian vocabulary grew
and Australian phrases were coined,
Australian English didn't get official respectability.
In 1 926, the director of education in New South Wales
could still write...
MAN: "It is sad to reflect that other people
are able to recognise Australians by their speech.
Most unfortunately,
our variation from the accepted standard
is along Iines which are harsh, unmusical,
and unpleasant to the ear.
Teachers must do their utmost to check this development
away from standard English."
ANNOUNCER: AII nations have their symbols
and Australia is well served by Sydney Harbour.
This day fit for a queen -- their queen.
The English Ianguage had sent its slang
and its dialects to a new country,
where they developed a personality of their own.
But standard English was keeping them in thrall.
The ways of speaking in Australia
formed a rigid social hierarchy.
The broad vowels and slang were at the bottom.
Standard English, Queen's English, was at the top.
The convicts might have thrown off their physical shackles,
but the Iocal Ianguage wouldn't Iose its chains
until the Iate 20th century.
Just as in the Caribbean,
English was still keeping its children down.
ANNOUNCER: But all Australia was eager
for a sight of this young woman.
Here too it was the first time that the reigning sovereign
had Ianded on Australia's shores.
The British Empire by the turn of the 20th century
was in its heyday,
and British interests, as every schoolchild knew then,
had taken the English Ianguage all around the globe.
The spread of the Ianguage was inseparable
from the growing feeling of superiority
which marked the empire and its people.
When Daniel Defoe's shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe
encountered the man he called Friday,
the first English word he taught his new acquaintance
was "master."
There was no question about who was in charge
and no question about the Ianguage they'd use.
As the empire spread, Crusoe's attitude became the norm.
[ People speaking native Ianguages ]
Around the world,
English pushed hundreds of Iocal Ianguages aside.
In some cases, it could be said to have killed them off.
Less than half the aboriginal Ianguages survived,
and they now face extinction.
North American Ianguages also suffered,
among them Lakota --
the Ianguage of Sitting Bull and the Sioux people.
WOMAN: [ Speaking Lakota ]
BRAGG: Did you speak Lakota to your grandfather?.
WOMAN: You have to.
Otherwise he wouldn't understand me, if I start speaking English.
[ Laughs ]
Did you enjoy Iearning English?.
We have to Iearn the English.
And if we speak Indian to each other,
then both of us have to go up to the teacher's desk,
and she makes us stand in front of her.
She gets this big ruler...
...about this Iong and this thick.
And she slaps our hand.
Hits us till it's all red.
And they won't Iet us speak our Ianguage,
because I think they were trying to change us into white men.
[ Speaking Lakota ]
BRAGG: I spoke to Delores BIacksmith in Chicago.
But you don't have to go that far 'round the world
to find examples of English bullying --
no further than Wales.
The military, political, and social dominance
of the English over the Welsh
has always been reflected in their Ianguages.
When the two countries were united in 1 536,
there was no Iaw actually to prohibit the speaking of Welsh,
but no one who insisted on using Welsh
was allowed to hold an official position.
A prejudice against the Welsh had been established.
It continued.
By 1847, a royal commission declared that,
"The Welsh Ianguage is a vast drawback to Wales
and a manifold barrier to the moral progress
and commercial prosperity of the people."
And the Education Act of 1 870
dictated that children would have to Iearn English.
In schoolrooms Iike this,
it could Iead to unfortunate, even cruel practices.
Welsh wasn't banned,
but some teachers and schools outlawed it in the classroom.
In some cases, a token Iike this --
the Ietters "WN" stand for "Welsh Not" --
was placed round the neck of any child
slipping back into their first Ianguage.
Child was encouraged to inform on child,
or "welsh" on them --
that's where the term came from --
and humiliation was used as a cultural weapon.
[ Men speaking Welsh ]
In the Iast years of the 1 9th century,
there was a push to revive the Welsh Ianguage.
It was Ied by the future prime minister of Britain,
LIoyd George.
The National Eisteddfod continued promote and celebrate
Welsh Ianguage and culture.
Bilingual signage and official Iiterature
were introduced in the '60s
so that today the Welsh Ianguage can be seen
everywhere throughout Wales.
But it's debatable whether all this
has really been enough to turn the tide.
In 1 900, half the people in Wales spoke Welsh.
By 1 981, it was Iess than 1 in 5.
The story seemed to be one
of a Iong and irreversible decline,
while English marched on from strength to strength.
Just this year, though,
surveys have shown that the number of Welsh speakers
is increasing for the first time in two centuries.
Welsh has found its way back into the schoolrooms,
but it's still a minority Ianguage.
80%% of Welsh people don't speak it at all,
and its future is far from certain.
But at Ieast the days of the "Welsh Not" are over.
And in Wales, as elsewhere in the world,
English is no Ionger acting as a state-approved bully.
[ SIow piano music playing ]
MAN: # Pale hands I Ioved #
# Beside the Shalimar #
BRAGG: As the British Empire has faded away,
English has had to come to terms with a changed world...
...reaching accommodations with Iocal Ianguages
and with new political realities.
Here in India, the new constitution
which followed independence
planned to abolish English altogether
and instead make Hindi the sole official Ianguage.
But it didn't happen.
Hindi is only the first Ianguage in some states of India,
and other parts have their own Ianguages,
Iike here in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal
where Bengali is spoken.
Regional rivalries are often fierce
and so the users of other Ianguages
exerted political pressure -- in some places even rioted --
to keep English rather than be forced to use Hindi.
And even the most cursory glance
at any of these bookstalls here in Calcutta
will show you how English is still part of Indian Iife.
It's a minority Ianguage, but it's the Ianguage in which
many Indian states communicate with each other
and with the outside world.
And that gives it tremendous clout --
some would say too much.
It's 7.:30 a.m. in Calcutta.
The Tollygunge CIub is the favourite meeting place
for the state's top officials and captains of industry.
MAN: That's a Iovely one.
Thank you for the game.
Now, who's signing for breakfast today?.
BRAGG: For these people, English is a badge,
indicating they're part of India's social and ruling elite.
Across town, in another world,
street children are being taught the basics.
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
For them, English might mean a fingerhold,
a scrap of advantage in getting a job against desperate odds.
Across India, parents of all classes
will make great efforts
to make English part of their child's education.
For this man, English is the Ianguage he must hire
to deal with the bureaucracy of taxing a car.
[ Speaking native Ianguage ]
For this man, it's essential to his business.
MAN: Somebody came and hit the...
BRAGG: Many Indians slip happily from English
into their native Bengali or Hindi and back again.
For them, English has become, in a sense,
another Indian Ianguage.
[ Men at Work's "Down Under" plays ]
# And she said, "Do you come from a Iand down under?. " #
BRAGG: In other parts of the former empire,
English and its Iinguistic offspring
have also had to come to terms with independence.
In Australia, it came Iate.
The election of the Whitlam government in 1 972
rode a wave of nationalism.
Australia began to Iook back towards Britain
Iess than it Iooked forward to its own future
as a multicultural country.
Four years Iater,
the first Australian dictionary to be compiled in Australia
reached the bookshelves,
helping to Iegitimise the Ianguage
and showing that Australia had cast off its cultural cringe
and was ready to revel in its own distinctive Ianguage.
This is the Macquarie Dictionary.
In the D's alone,
you find Australian words Iike "daggy" --
meaning "dirty or slovenly" --
from "dags," the name given to the matted tufts of wool
'round a sheep's bottom.
"Deadhouse" -- a room in a hotel
where drunks are put to sleep it off.
"Delo" -- a shortened form of "delegate."
"Dingo stiffener" -- a dingo hunter.
"Dog's cock" -- an exclamation mark.
"Dog-eye" -- an Aboriginal English word
for "a white person."
"Drack" -- an adjective, "depressingly unattractive,"
possibly from "Dracula."
And "dunny" -- an outside toilet,
a name that can be traced back
to the English words "danna," meaning "dung,"
and "ken," meaning "place" or "house."
In old British dialects,
you could find "dannaken" or "dunnakin."
The Australians shortened it and keep it in use.
Vocabulary aside, Australian English has developed
some distinct variations of its own.
G'day. How you goin'?.
Good.
No, I'm down by Circular Quay having some brekkie.
I think there are two features
that really earmark Australian English, at Ieast for me.
One is the abbreviations,
the Australian Iove of shortenings,
so that a word, if it's not already a single syllable,
gets reduced to a single syllable
and then an ending is bunged on --
-ie ending or an -o ending.
So something Iike,
"My mate Jacko, you know, the weirdo journo from Freeo,
he slipped on a bit of Iino during his smoko one arvo
and ended up on compo and a real dero."
Another characteristic, I think, of Australian English is the --
sometimes called "HRT."
This is not Hormone Replacement Therapy, but High Rise Terminal.
It's the Australian questioning intonation.
So it really is Iike the rising intonation of a yes/no question,
except that you find it on statements.
WOMAN: How old was this boy?.
He's 24 now.
-Was it Phil?. -Yeah.
What did she say?.
Well, I called her this arvo.
WOMAN: Here in Australia you encounter
quite, well, amused --
probably even hostile -- reactions now
to British received pronunciation,
the Queen's English.
People find them affected now,
and they're wanting much more to speak Australian English.
You see this fellow over here. It's his bucks party.
I'm bored! No more!
[ Bob Marley & the Wailers' "Jamming" plays ]
BRAGG: Independence reached the West Indies in the 1960s,
and with it came a determination
to reject the colonial past in all its forms.
Here in Jamaica, there's been a campaign to make Patwa,
the Iocal speech, as socially acceptable as standard English.
It's all around and no Ionger regarded
as a badge of social inferiority.
[ Dancehall reggae music plays ]
Uh-huh. Wicked.
[ Men speaking Patwa ]
[ Speaking Patwa ]
Pull-up!
Anybody who wants to communicate with the public effectively
in a Ianguage of feeling
and a Ianguage that will get them to move and to act,
uses Jamaican.
MAN ON RADIO: Here we are again --
the vibe master, Jerry Dee.
I'm gonna play some Buju Banton, some Bob Marley, some...
Obviously, it has gone into popular music. It's on radio.
The radio talk shows are Iargely carried out in Jamaican,
even by people who can speak English.
It is not the Ianguage of the...
of simply for illiterate, ignorant people.
BRAGG: Patwa on the airwaves or in the dance hall is one thing.
For it to be tolerated or encouraged
in the schoolroom is another.
Now if we were going to talk Patwa,
can you think of another way we could say, "How are you?. "
What could you say?.
-"How ya do?. " -"Wa gwan?. "
WOMAN: "Wa gwan?. " "How ya do?. "
What used to happen, right, is when Jamaica was under slavery,
before slavery was abolished,
the slaves, when they used to have to break...
BRAGG: There are those Iike the poet and performer
Joan Andrea Hutchinson
who actively promote Patwa among children.
But it's not government policy yet to teach it in schools.
Here standard English is still the norm.
HUTCHINSON: Five, six, seven, and...
[ Singing in Patwa ]
See you smiling!
BRAGG: And there are those who argue
that children educated in Patwa at the expense of English
will be placed at a serious disadvantage
in dealing with the rest of the English-speaking world.
What would you say to that?.
I would say, a typical Anglo-Saxon response.
The Anglo-Saxons seem to think
that people can only speak one Ianguage, right?.
In fact, multilingualism, bilingualism, is the norm.
There's no particular reason why Jamaica will be cut off
simply because Jamaicans use Jamaican --
or the Ianguage that is popularly called Patwa --
for purposes of organising their Iives internally,
and using English for international communication.
But I think it's a mind-set -- an Anglo-Saxon mind-set --
in which English is the official Ianguage
of Britain and the U.S. and it's also an international Ianguage.
But that's an accident of history.
BRAGG: Historically, English began its imperial adventure
as an export from our islands.
It spawned new Englishes,
new varieties that were at first despised
by speakers from the mother country,
but which grew into distinct national tongues
as their speakers freed themselves
from their colonial past.
Today, English and its offspring
stand side by side around the world --
a world in which English, as we'II see,
has adopted a crucial role as a global Ianguage.
Subtitling made possible by Ahmad AL Zouabi